We’ve never needed stories more – a masterclass by a story coach from The Moth
Go deep with the mattering playlist
We all tell stories all of the time, but what makes a magical, memorable story? What pitfalls should we avoid? This was an issue that I was thinking about. Presentations are stories, and we deliver presentations every day.
In my own investigation I found real value in the book by the storytelling organisation The Moth. I was beyond excited when I saw they were releasing a UK edition of the book. One of the authors Kate Tellers joins me to discuss The Moth’s approach to making memorable stories. Kate is a senior director at The Moth, helping people transform into storytellers. But she explains something even more valuable, of how The Moth run workshops that allow colleagues to better connect with each other by sharing their stories with each other.
How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth
Carolyn Martin’s story about becoming a Catholic Sister
Josh Broder’s story about being an extra in a huge film
Kate’s own Moth stories are here
TRANSCRIPTION
Bruce
This is Eat, sleep, work, repeat. It’s a podcast about workplace culture, psychology, and life. Hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you for joining today. A couple of things before we kick off. I’ve, I announced a couple of free events and you can find out details of them in the link at the top of the show notes.
Also, it went out on the newsletter. So the first of them is a very intimate event, and that’s myself and Rory Sutherland in conversation. And that’s gonna be taking place on Tuesday, the 27th of September at six o’clock. And you can find details in the notes below. Very intimate event. It’s not being streamed or recorded the only way to See that participate that is turning up on the night and that’s hosted by Radix Big Tent Foundation and the Big Tent Foundation are a nonpartisan and organization that tries to help individuals who’ve been left behind by party politics. I spoke at Radix big tent event in Bristol this year and we’re putting on an event there, so it’s a wonderful.
A group of people who attend those events and so it should be great. And Rory clearly is just this formidable intellect, so it’ll be fascinating to have the discussion and debate with him. I’m really looking forward to that. Separately, I’m also doing an event with the RSA now the RSA you’ll possibly have even been to an event if you’re ever in London.
They’ve got a place down in John Adams Street, which is just around the back of the strand. And this event is going to be a hybrid event, so it’s free and you can join, you can get a live streaming ticket for free. Or you can come along for free to the RSA. So fabulous to partner with the RSA, I did something with them in the midst of lockdown, so I’m so thrilled to do something in person.
Two really lovely events, both free, that you can come along to. If you are in person, then you can hang around and have a chat or you can buy a copy of Fortitude, but I’m thrilled to be able to offer those things for zero charge. Fabulous. And thank you to both the RSA and to the Big Tent Foundation for helping put those things together and to Rory for participating.
Today’s episode is about something that I’ve been intrigued about myself. It’s about the art of storytelling, and as today’s guest, Kate Tellers works for The Moth. And if you’ve ever. If you’re one of the a hundred million people who listens to a Moth podcast every year, or you’ve ever attended a moth event, moth events are about true stories told life.
Now, I found myself in a situation recently where I was thinking, I want to, I wanna think about the way I present the way I connect with audiences. And so I spent a long time thinking about it and, I did some stuff watching. Comedians actually, I did some stuff thinking about great presentations and I found myself listening to the American version of the Moth book that we’re gonna talk about today.
So the book is called How to Tell a Story by the Moth Guide to how to Tell a Story. It’s. Fabulous. The thing I would strongly say is that not only is it a good book, it’s an incredible audio book because they not only tell you the transcript of what someone said, you hear someone saying it.
So there’s one thing hearing this is the fastest storyteller we’ve ever had on stage. And then reading this is the slow storyteller we’re having. But then to hear them. It’s just incredible because it immediately makes you think pace. Wow. How important is pace as part of delivery? The Moth has got a really clear framework that’s learned from years of running, 25 years of the MO events.
They’ve learned what stories work, and the book is this incredible. Coach really, that tells you how to think about your own stories. The thing that I found personally helpful for it, so here’s how this podcast came about. I listened to that. I as a fan, and then I saw three months, hence I saw this in June, that they had a UK version of the book coming out.
I was like I am going to. Beg and pester them to come on. And so that sure enough the publisher and actually, but I found two things I found there was really real value in self-knowledge in trying to think of what are my stories, how would I tell a story? But secondly, trying to think of applications for that.
And one thing Kate says in this Conversation. She says, look, first and foremost the Moth actually, she talks about this. The Moth actually go into organizations and run storytelling sessions for team members. And the real value is twofold. Not only is the art of understanding the construction of a story of value.
When people tell their personal stories to each other, they feel a strength of connection that they lacked before. First it was this person that you are always seeing on a zoom call and you dunno anything about them. Now it becomes rendered in flesh and blood. This vivid story that you want to see how it plays out.
So the first thing about connection, the second part is that if we understand how stories Matter and connect with us. We can just make our own delivery of messages more interesting. The whole of life is filled with us watching things that are boring and pretending not to be bored, right? The average state of you sitting in a meeting is you staring at a screen pretending to listen and don’t pretend you listen to everything ’cause you don’t.
So you, we’re in this state of pretending to listen when someone arrives, who’s thought about, I want to deliver this in a captivating, memorable, interesting, involving way. It’s just this enriching things. It helps everyone, you forget that everyone’s transformed. Anyway, that’s why I wanted to talk to them.
We have a really lovely discussion and one thing I’d say to you is that I the audio book of this is. It could be a great gift for someone or just a great lesson. Oh, look, you could do the actual book. I rarely sell books that hard, but I’ve really enjoyed listening to this.
I’ve really enjoyed listening to it. Anyway, so let me give an introduction and we’ll jump in. Say. Kate, she mentions along the way, Kate Tellers. She mentions a couple of stories, and I’ve included both of those stories in the show notes. Kate Tellers is a story. Kate Tellers a host, a director of the Moth, and she’s a co-author of the new book that they’ve just published, which is How to Tell a Story, the Essential Guide To memorable storytelling. She’s also told her own moth stories and I’ve included those in the show notes as well. Really wonderful discussion. I think you’re gonna get so much from this.
Here’s my conversation with the moths, Kate Tellers,
Bruce
thank you so much for joining me. I’d love to kick off if you could just introduce you, who you are and what you do.
Kate Tellers
Sure. My name is Kate Tellers and I’m a senior director at the Not-for-Profit Storytelling Organization, the Moth.
Bruce
And I’d love to hear a little bit of the origin story of the Moth if you’d share that with us.
Kate Tellers
Sure. Yep. People have a lot of ideas about where the name Moth came from, but we’re actually named after the bug, the actual bug, the predator bug in some cases.
We were founded in 1997 by an author named George Dos Green, and he’s originally from the south, so he the south of the United States Georgia. And so he used to sit on his friend Wanda’s Porch and everyone would tell stories on the porch. He sold a few books and when he came to New York City, he really was struck by the fact that he would go to poetry events and spoken word events and he was more interested in what people were saying to introduce the story, the poems than.
The actual poems, he found that connection, reminiscent of what he felt on this his friend Wanda’s Porch, that was really what he craved. So he just invited some people to come, it started in his living room and sit down and share stories from their lives. And the idea was it had to be a true story and the audience.
Couldn’t interrupt. It couldn’t be at a cocktail party where everyone’s jumping in and, adding their own anecdote and trying to steer the conversation in their way. And or it, that proved to be a huge success. And we started to do events in smaller theaters in the, in downtown Manhattan, then larger theaters and new York City and we’ve since sold out Lincoln Center and the Sydney Opera House and 3000 and Union Chapel in London. And huge venues. And we record all of our shows and many of those stories go on to be on our Peabody Award winning Moth radio Hour on our podcast, which is downloaded a hundred million times per year.
They’re anthologized in our books and our three books before the one that we’ve just. Put out and have launched several training programs and have really just created an entire world an ecosystem of storytelling. The name Moth, I said it was a bug is reminiscent of that. It’s the MOS that used to fly onto Wanda’s Porch and would go towards that light bulb. And it speaks to the community that builds when we share our stories and when we listen, when we take the time to listen to each other’s stories and the way we all gravitate together as people.
Bruce
The reason why I love this book, and as I was saying to you before I both all listened to it and read it. It’s because it feels like a sort of personal coach taking you through some of the things that you might consider some of the ways that you might tell a story. And we all find ourselves telling stories. We all find, whether it’s in a professional capacity or we’re asked to speak at a wedding, or we’re asked to advocate for someone we’re all telling stories.
In fact, you talk about how people might think about the stories they tell in, or the book talks about the stories people might tell in job interviews. So we all, we often find ourselves in a moment to tell stories. The Moth have got a certain philosophy of stories, a certain sort of framework.
True stories told out loud in the first person. They’re not read out. There’s going involve stakes. How do you think those. Those pillars of moth stories have been reached and what are the particular reasons why you’ve reached those? Those foundational anchors.
Kate Tellers
Oh, it’s interesting. So how you’ve named a few of them, so I’ll touch on a few of them.
We reached these pillars by doing it, in the very beginning, like I said, it was a group of people, one person standing up and telling a story. And then, and seeing what the crowd responded to and what we understood and what we felt, a phrase we say a lot of the moth is, when we feel the roof lifted something that I think is really special and unique about moth storytelling, and I come from a performance background, so before I went to my first moth event, I’d been an audience member or a cast member in hundreds of shows, and it was at the Moth that I felt, the roof lift or as I say, people breathing the same breath.
There’s like a connection and an interchange between the storyteller and the audience where it’s one person speaking. Audibly, but it’s like a dialogue. And what we really search for at the Moth is that human connection. It goes back to the moth going to the flame. So the principles of what makes a great moth story come from that.
How do we create that kind of Moth magic? So we always find, that. First and foremost, let’s talk about truth. And truth is completely related to vulnerability. That when someone tells a true story from their lives and what is true to them as a human, not what is factually true, that they want to communicate to an audience.
We, as human beings respond to that. They’re letting us in human beings respond to vulnerability with any. Within each other. Not to embarrass you, but I was just listening to your podcast about men and friends and you touch on a lot of these themes and I was like, so I was like, yes, this is, I love the way you were looking at it.
Not to whatever, but that’s where we really started to look at that is truth is really important. Embellishments distance us from the audience because if our audience is being in moth, audiences are great, but moth audiences. Are com are comprised of humans. If you are a human being that is seeking to make connection with another human being, you can sense when someone is being honest with you and you can be compassionate and empathetic with to their true experiences.
So that starts truth as like the. Like bedrock pedestal. And then, speaking to something really technical, like we don’t read, we have people tell their stories. That speaks to just the practical way that you get people to that, that we find that if someone’s reading their words, they’re focusing on what their words are.
But if they’re sharing a story, like we don’t say perform a story, we try to, everyone says it seeps in. But really it’s not a performance, it’s sharing a story. So when you’re sharing a story, you’re not thinking, does this sentence come before this sentence? Or, oh no, I messed up my prepositions.
You’re thinking, what is the essence? What is the truthful essence that the experience that I’m sharing, and how can I communicate that to this audience? And if I trip up and need to go back and remember something, or if I stumble over a word, it doesn’t matter. That makes me all the more human. As a storyteller and as an audience member, we just think that’s a person really sharing who they are in this moment.
Bruce
So that sort of speaks to the truth piece of it from both a philosophical and a practical Point. And the first person element, I guess it’s quite critical if you want to connect with the storyteller not telling a story that they’ve had passed to them or that these as a family legend.
Is that right? Is it you’ve tried to avoid people just turning up and. Sharing a family yarn.
Kate
Absolutely. There I love fiction. I love, hi historical nonfiction. I love there’s much value in telling stories that are not specifically and uniquely our own, but that does go back to that em emotional connection that we have with the stories is that the story has to be about your truth and your emotional connection to it.
Bruce
And you’re also speaking too, let’s parse out the difference between say, a eulogy and a moth story that you tell on stage. A eulogy, you may be incredibly connected to the person that you’re talking about and the stories that you’re telling about them, but there’s probably no arc. There’s no change.
Kate
It’s, you’re not say, there, I’m sure there are eulogies that are like. I hated this person when they were younger and now, I ended up marrying them. I’m, that would be hilarious, eulogy. But the traditional eulogy is not that, and there’s a time and a place for that. But at the Moth, what we find really powerful is that transformation that happens within the story is who are you in the beginning of the story and where is your, where are your emotional stakes?
What do you care about? And then who are you with that? End of the story and how has this experience changed you? And that’s a way that we as listeners can reflect on that experience and more deeply understand the storyteller when we see them go through some sort of transformation.
Versus seeing something that’s all OneNote.
Bruce
Yeah, that was what I found most interesting. ’cause I guess the process that a lot of people go into this, maybe they’re in a situation where they need to think of a story or they want to tell a story or they’re just actually, there’s a degree of self-knowledge about thinking about what your own stories are that I found personally Insightful and revealing, trying to ask yourself, what are my stories? What are the, there’s something in the book talking about what would be your, go-to stories in, various situations. And it really poses a question of you to think, okay, what can I mine for stories here?
What can I capture? And the really, I found that a really helpful signpost that there needed to be changed. There needed to be, there needed to be stakes, there needed to be, the, one of the things in the book talks about the importance of decisions as creating a story in the sense that there was a moment where I chose to do this or this, and I then saw through the consequences of it. So that was really helpful for me, mining those things and looking to those things. But does that prove a problem to some people when they’re trying to find a story that they can’t find, something that they consider? Significantly enough. They can’t feel that there’s something of importance enough.
How do you help people find their stories? Or what advice would you give?
Kate
Yeah, here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter what’s happened to you in our life, in your life, we are human beings, we are fallible, and we all contain, contains some degree of insecurity. So I will tell you, someone who has, saved someone’s life, summited a mountain, whatever.
He’s very likely still to come to us and say, I don’t know if I have any stories. No one thinks they have stories and everything. Everyone knows they have story, that happens in concert. There’s no way to, to predict it. So I think what you’ve identified, I love it when you can teach the book.
This is amazing first, but like what you’ve identified is really zooming in on those moments. Like just start looking at change moments or, I love the idea of George, our founders, very into this idea of decisions. One of the things that I like about decisions that’s baked into good storytelling with it is that a decision has to be, if you’re remembering a decision you had to care about it to some degree.
Whether it’s, what you cho chose as a vocation in your life, whether you chose to say yes to a second date. What happened when you saw something terrible on the street? All, what did you choose to do when you saw something terrible on the street? Like all of those things.
You, you, if you’re remembering them as a decision, they’re probably like a nugget or as. Seed for your story, but then they also speak to this idea that stories are not what happens to us. Stories are how we respond to the events in our lives or, who we are in, I shouldn’t say not respond, who we are in those events in our lives.
Because Bruce, if you and I could experience the exact same thing and share a very different experience of it, because I’m going to bring my entire lived experience to it, and you are going to bring your entire lived experience to it. And that’s the beauty we’d get. Two different stories that we could both really connect on.
Like thematically, there’d probably be some similarities and obviously plot points, there’d be similarities, but there’s that uniqueness where I would get an insight as to who you are by how you processed and thought about, and told and cared about that same series of events. And is it that, so what would hook people in about that?
Bruce
Is it the specificity of it? Is it about the I’m just thinking specifically maybe you’re going through something where you think, okay, I’ve, I think I’ve got the basis of a story here. How do. How would you even try to draw people into that? Is it about trying to think of the detail that might be relatable.
I’m really struck by the similarity with songwriting that often it’s in songwriting, in a Taylor Swift song sometimes it’s these real specificity of no one else could ever experienced that in exactly the same way that strangely makes it transcendent and relatable. And I find that really an interesting concept that, you know.
Almost the fact that only you could have experienced it, but you are so vividly describing it can. Somehow allow more people to anchor into. So I’m just interested in what are the things that hook people into a story?
Kate
You’re specifics, you’re absolutely correct. I’m always, like when I look at stories highlighting, can you say this more specifically?
Can you give a specific example? Can you, and I think one of the reasons that specifics are so compelling in storytelling is that the more specific that you are, the more your audience knows exactly where you are and how they relate to it. So there’s this thing where weirdly, the specificity then breeds like a universality to the story.
So if you take something like a common life experience, like a wedding day or something, if one person is saying I felt X at this time, if you’ve had a similar experience, maybe you felt like x plus one, or you felt something similar and then you get it ’cause you’re like, oh, they’re over here on it.
But then there’s also just the idea that every Moth story has like a kind of overarching. Thread through it, theme. So a lot of the time, even if we haven’t, there are many stories, like a wedding is, a common experience all over the world, but there are many things that are not common where that you hear on the moth really unique experiences.
An astronaut, tightening a screw in space or something like that. And you’re gonna, but. But even through that, these bigger themes and the story I just threw out here, this is Mike Massimino, he’s an astronaut. He tells the story about going out in space with the Hubble telescope and then, realizing that the screw was stripped and billions of dollars have been poured to this or whatever. But the thing that comes into his head is, my, my children are gonna think I’m a failure. Which is very relatable to a lot of us. Yeah. Regardless of whether it was my children thought I was gonna be a failure, whatever’s going through his head, there’s those bigger themes of like success and failure and pressure to perform and, all of these things that even if we haven’t been floating in space in a great deal of stress, we understand as empathetic human beings.
And that specificity really draws us into it. So that’s definitely what I look for in a story. And oftentimes like the content of a story pitch or of a story is interesting. But what’s more interesting to me is like zooming, like what makes this experience unique? Even if it was a really high stakes situation, if you were not, if it’s a high stake scenario, but you do not have an emotional stake in it and you cannot articulate specifically why you had an emotional stake in it, it’s very likely that your audience will disengage. Whereas if you, I’ll give you another example of a story. We have Gail Simmons, who is on the food network here in the us, tells a story about going on our honeymoon to Vietnam and being obsessed with this one particular bowl of this restaurant that sells only these noodles.
And the entire story is about her desire to get a bowl of noodles. Which is not, who cares? Get noodles. You’re in Vietnam, you can find noodles, yeah. But because it’s that important, because she cares that much, it’s a story because there’s reasons that she’s going. There’s everything.
She puts herself through what her, what she physically feels like when she’s trying to have it, what happens when she doesn’t get it. It’s a story about getting a bowl of noodles, but it’s not. It’s a story about wanting something so badly and what happens when you don’t get it, which we can all relate to.
That’s so fascinating. These, because that’s. And firstly, it’s an illustration of why we might have many more stories than we believe. We’ve got to tell because just trying to see something that effectively is em an emblem of something bigger. Is there a way that you would advise someone when someone sits down and they say okay, I need to work through.
Is that about. Skilled probing, saying, tell me more. Tell me more. Why are you drawn to that story? What do you think it signifies or what would help her find that story? I dunno who helped her with that one, but what processes would be involved? ’cause if someone’s. Taking themselves through this process themselves, what questions should they be asking or what should they advise someone to ask them?
As because you’ve read the book, everyone that appears on our moth main stage works with a director who does. I like the way you put it. Skilled, probing, that is, we do. And so the developing of a story is very much a dialogue where we ask questions. So I’ll tell you as a director, what I ask for is.
I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna ask the big question of like, why do you care? That might be hard for someone to answer because they haven’t quite gotten through it. And a lot of the, they might not have the answer at that point. And a lot of the, what I think is so valuable about storytelling is the process of understanding, of really thinking about.
Our experiences and how we want to share them often gives us clarity on our own experience. So that dialogue that you have with a Moth director, or the dialogue you would have with yourself or whomever is helping you craft your story, is oftentimes shaping the story. It’s not simply the ordering of information.
It’s like how you relate to the information that you want to share. So if you came to me and said, Kate, I wanna tell you a story about this bike race where I fell off my bike and lost. I wouldn’t necessarily say, what does that mean to you? But I might start with the state. I’ll get background.
How often have you been biking? What has biking been in your life for you? Do you have other hobbies? I’d ask questions around it and then I’d start to listen to for patterns. Oh it sounds every time you’ve described doing this, you’ve done this with your dad, so what was your dad’s relationship with da?
What’s your relationship with health or physical fitness? Are you a competitive family? And I just, as a director, you just start to listen for like those patterns or those, what’s unique or what’s the tell or where do I feel Very often these conversations are very emo emotional.
So where do I see emotion coming up and what does that emotion mean? And if I feel the story tellers ready to tell the story, how can we really look at that emotion and understand that emotion and find the place for that in the story? It’s just like a matter of finding leads. And it is, again, it’s specific questions.
It’s not like the larger abstract. It’s really that like, how do I dig into this moment? Or how do I dig into this moment? And then what do I discover and then how does what I discover relate to the other things that I’ve discovered before? And how will some of what I’m discovering then make a coherent story?
Bruce
That I guess leads me onto a question about structure. Should a story be a three act story? Should a story be something? How should we be thinking specifically? The one thing that really springs to mind to me, quite often when I’m in a zone, when I’m thinking about whether presentations or stories, I often think.
You spent so much time thinking about the start and the middle and the ending just felt like it was, and that’s that, it’s an anti-climatic thing. Should we be thinking about beginnings and middles as a beginnings and ends as two parts, the same things, should a story neatly tie up at the end, how would you think about different chapters?
Kate
Okay, so very simply, the structure of your story should be. What will most effectively communicate your story to your audience? So in some, like for example, and I’m, I’m sure you saw this in the book, there are people that start their stories with a flashback and then they jump and then they, whatever, and then they jump in time.
You can tell your story in a linear fashion, but telling your story in a linear fashion is a choice. It’s not a rule. It is the way that your audience will best understand your story. So you have to understand what is the largest story that I’m trying to tell? I’m trying to tell about how in this moment I realized that my sister had always had always imitated me.
Had always looked up to me, and this is the first time she broke away. And the first time I felt her broke away, this should be first person. So sometimes in terms of like actual structure, you might, you might not tell it in a linear fashion, you might whatever. But in terms of beginning and ending specifically, they should always relate.
The end is in the beginning. The beginning is in the end. So there should be a connection. You should go from one place to one place. And I often, I find this so helpful and I often when I teach storytelling, have people do this is once you have a general idea of your story, think about your first line and think about your last line, and if they’re completely at odds with each other, if you can’t get an idea of the essence of your story by those first and last lines, which oftentimes are the only lines that I encourage people to explicitly script, then there’s something missing.
And very often we start our stories too early and we end them too late, and then we have to tighten the V, and then those things become clearer. That being said. Story stories that tie up neatly in a bow often ring untrue because life doesn’t tie up neatly in a bow, so you should feel. We should feel sated by the story, but we should feel we should know that life goes on from that.
And particularly when we tell stories about big event, like I came to the Moth because I wanted to tell a story about my mother who had passed away. There’ll never be a day when I don’t miss my mother. But I do have closure on that. Some closure on elements of that experience, and that’s where the story comes from.
That doesn’t mean, she’s gone, but I don’t miss, that’s it. She was my mom. Bye. It’s okay. So this was this experience and this is how I went through this experience, and this is how it changed me and this is how it forever changed me, but not this experience. Doesn’t continue to affect me and to inform my life in some way.
Bruce
You, you touch on a really critical part there, which is the process after you’ve crafted a story, the process of delivering that story and I think most people will know that whether they’ve rehearsed a presentation or something and they’ve learned it off by heart and the almost.
Terrifying and stultifying process of forgetting a next line when you’ve learned it. Like by rote makes the delivery of, we’ve all been an audience where we’ve watched someone who’s learned something by rote delivery it, and it’s this horrible mechanical thing that if you ask them afterwards over a coffee to tell you the presentation, they’d probably give And a 60, 70% decent approximation, but with so much more heart and character. And so that idea that you only encourage people to learn the first line and the last line is really intriguing. What way would people think then to navigate their way through a story? If they’re terrified of forgetting critical elements of it.
Kate
The story should the story should never feel like rote or rehearsed. I think we’re agreeing, but the story, you should prepare and prepare well to share your story. And I think what happens is you’ll script your first line and you’ll script your last line. And everyone’s a little bit different.
Some people script a lot more, some people script a lot less. But when we work with a storyteller, we have pro. Pair together, we know you go from here to here, and like we know your landing pads. And what ends up happening is you rehearse the story Is, much of the story is exactly the same way every time that you share it, it’s the same way when if you have a story that you share at a cocktail party, you’re gonna share most, your phrases are gonna be the, it’s just like it becomes baked into to who you are and how you share it.
But you should have a freedom from those phrases. You’re, again, you’re sharing the emotion of it, you’re sharing. Something present in the moment. You’re not thinking, I didn’t say that it was a blueish stare. I said it was a stare shoot. I need to, like I screwed it up. And so you should definitely know, like the map of the story is very intentionally built.
Details that need to be in different parts of the story are very intentionally put in. But when you’re thinking about when you’re sharing the story, what’s in your brain is not the page. What’s in your brain? Is the what comes next or the images of the story. You’re like, you’re present. You’re walking through this experience with the audience, which engages the audience so much more than if they see you like scrolling through a script in your hand.
Bruce
Yeah. It’s really, and the experience of being in the audience when someone is. Fluently trying to recall details and bringing you through it’s captivating to someone, something more human than these presentations where people try and get it word perfect and it ends up lacking some humanity, yeah. The moth organization has worked with companies and done some corporate stuff. I, and I’d be just so interested to hear. How you help companies? Is this about company stories, about the principles of storytelling in presentations? How would you help members of organizations and what adaptations do you need to make to the moth approach?
Kate
Sure. So I’ve been the leading our Moth Works program for over a decade now, and there’s many things that I’ve learned from going into hundreds of businesses and everything else and all these different experiencesi from financial institutions to nonprofits to marketers to create, I’ve worked in many audiences, but the one thing that I always come back to, and that we always start with, and I think we always will, is that we start with personal stories.
We want to hear and we do this through workshops and we’ll do customized events, but let’s look at workshops. We want people to go through the experience of understanding story structure and sharing story through the experience of looking at it through their own personal stories. We find that That is the quickest way. It’s the best way. It’s what we do best to teach moth storytelling, but also at its fundamental basis, what you will get when you bring storytelling into a company. Is it a really cohesive team building moment? And oftentimes that’s simply all we’re brought in to do is how do we get this group of people that don’t interact or don’t understand each other or don’t communicate, or are, we’re having trouble like get on the Same page. How do we do that? We bring in and they share personal stories and they can be around themes that are relevant to work, themes that are a part of the offsite, or they can be completely unrelated. My clients often are like, can they be that? And it really doesn’t matter. Like just get people to give space to their own experiences and share it with their colleagues.
And inevitably, I hear, I’ve known you, I’ve sat next to you for five years. I’ve never understood you in the way that I do now, we hear these like gorgeous, life cracking experiences come out and, the same thing that happens in businesses like storytelling is storytelling wherever it is.
It doesn’t change in business. So oftentimes people say I never understood this about me until now. And now they’ve had that experience of understanding their own life and themselves with their colleagues in a safe, supported space. That, that brings them all together. So we find that to be simply important.
But then moving past that, there’s this idea of the way we build culture. And I think, particularly as businesses get larger and larger, we lose a sense of community and culture and what our values are. So a lot of what people are doing in businesses is they’re sharing stories, their own personal stories, again.
We are always driving towards the personal of what? Okay, so let’s say we have a, we’re working with a company right now who is wants to be the most inclusive company in the world. What does inclusivity mean on a specific level when you speak about it? How do we speak about that in a way that human beings understand?
Let’s look at our personal stories and let’s look at how we can share stories about, about being outsiders, about being insiders, and how we can come together and hear those stories and create kind of a dialogue around that really elevates and supports the culture that you’re trying to build.
And then the third sort of major thing that we see is that storytelling is just an effective communication tool. And in business in particular, people need to communicate information and people are bored and they need like the human connection to the information that’s being shared, to absorb and to remember maybe some of the drier or more technical information.
So using a story to set up. A set of some data or thread through as you’re presenting data or information using a story to understand why you believe. A group of people should buy into an idea or a principle or a change or anything else is so much more effective than saying this is what we will be doing.
And such an effective leadership tool, of course, because people can understand why the person who is directing my next course of action. Is asking me to do this, to believe in this, to, to change in this way.
Bruce
In those instances, would there be a permitted divergence from them being personal stories?
Because I’m just interested in, in, in that instance, would you allow. Some degree of license taking.
Kate
Yeah. I am not God. People can do what they want to do. I wish I had that power, but I do not have it. What we do in our workshops is we really do focus on the personal. There’s a lot of, but of course there is a lot of, direct translation into stories that are not first person. And we certainly we’re talking about case studies or we’re talking about like in, in the case of like nonprofits or NGOs, like the work that we do and how do we share that? How do they effectively communicate the work that they’re doing when that’s often sometimes.
Their story is less important than the story of the people that they’re potentially serving or supporting, so there’s certainly a direct translation and we look at that a lot of the time. What are the bigger themes? What are, elements like looking at details, looking at the way these experiences have changed, people understanding contact, like all of these things are important regardless of whether they’re first person stories, but we always find our way in.
Is always with the personal, because then people have an emotional stake in what is being shared. And you it just to me is the most explicit way to understand those fundamental elements of storytelling that certainly apply beyond first person.
Bruce
there’s a really interesting thread that I’ve drawn from what you’ve talked about, which I think, we should, we should never underestimate the fact that most people are in a default state of being bored because partly ’cause they’re overloaded with information. We imagine if you think about the experience for a lot of people for the last two years. They’ve sat staring into a screen, hearing something that is clearly important to the person saying it, but is largely undifferentiated from the five or six hours that they’ve been staring to the screen that day.
And now the person delivering that thinks. The finally, I’m presenting my slides in the course of this day, and so everyone will be paying attention and they fundamentally misunderstand message sent, which is, everyone’s gonna be reading my bullet points, everyone’s gonna be listening to these to message received, which is someone sitting there thinking, I’m just gonna get some emails done while this presentation’s going on.
And I’ve crafted my face, so I look like I’m paying attention and. That absence of empathy is very similar, or that absence of interest is very similar to you saying when colleagues sit down and they hear the story of someone in front of them, they suddenly transfer from being a face on a zoom to being, oh, someone who’s got a backstory and he’s intriguing, and someone I care about and I wanna hear what the next stage of this person.
And they, they both seem to be related to some extent. If we’re gonna. Make connections with people other than the messages we’re giving or on rep the people we represent. We’ve gotta give people a reason to care. That strikes me as a fundamental component here.
Kate
Absolutely. We have absolutely. It’s like just the idea of giving memorable specific details is so small, but also the phrase that I always get from my clients is like, assault by information.
You just say to someone, this is what we’re doing and here’s all the data to support it. Goodbye. But telling a story and adding something personal to it, and maybe this is when I was skeptical about this idea, and here’s the moment that I realized, this is really important or really special or really effective, or whatever.
And so here’s where I’m landing. Taking your audience on that journey and giving them a, like a framework to understand why they should care about something is so much more interesting and illuminating than Plunk. Here’s all my supporting, evidence and here are my bullet points. Goodbye.
Bruce
Absolutely. Are there any things that, for you, are the big turnoffs for stories? When people do things the thing that’s really triggered it in my head is when you say, when you try tie a story too much in a bow, it feels a bit sacarrine and it feels a bit artificial. Are there any other big Pitfalls that potentially people should avoid.
Kate
Okay. I’ll tell you a couple and I’ll end with the one that’s really that, that I care the most about. But of course, great story. A great story isn’t, I’m great. Here’s how I was. Great. In conclusion, I’m great. Again, it like honesty is my north star. That is a boring story that is talking at someone. The truth of any situation is not that you were great all of the time. The more interesting story to me is not that you run ran the marathon, the more interesting story to me is the moment that you almost turned back. That’s where you’re vulnerable and that’s where you’re human. And that’s what I wanna say. Okay? And that goes again, like again, we’re talking about truth over and over again. That’s why I don’t like stories that are tied up in a bow because it’s nothing is tied up in a bow. Of course, like there’s, you can end a story in the moment that you realize you loved the person that you’re still married to 65 years later.
There has to be something like specific about that moment that really, that for me to be gut punched by it or, something that you’ve overcome. Something like that. But the other thing for me in particular, and I am always like, this is a note that I give over and over again is I don’t wanna know what happens until it happens. Because when you say to someone, this is the story about how I understood that that letting go was gonna help me be better, then I’m like I already know where I’m going. I’m so much less engaged. I versus if I know what you really care about, the beginning of your story, and then you take me through it in scene, I am there right with you.
I’m breathing with you. I’m thinking with you. I’m sweating. I’m happy, I’m sad. Like the beautiful thing about storytelling is that we get to synchronize. With strangers. And to giving it all away, like to, it just completely kicks me outta the story. And then I think but I saw that coming.
Bruce
So it’s almost leaving them to join the dots, leaving them to hit the aha moment in this, in, in empathy with you.
Kate
Exactly. And we need to know that’s why stakes are so important. We need to know why we care so much about those moments so that we can be there and say oh my gosh, did the letter come today? Oh, like it, be there with the shaking hands that are opening the mailbox. Of course, we need to know why that’s important. But then I wanna experience, I wanna know at the same time as you, what happens when you open that envelope
Bruce
So you’ve worked 10 years, more than 10 years with the Moth in your time, could you give us one or two stories that really have stood out for you and what you felt was special about them?
Kate
Oh, I have 12 million stories that have stuck out to me, but I’ll tell you. Okay. I’ll tell you a few. I’ve had this interesting opportunity where I’ve gotten to tell a lot of stories with. Catholic Sisters, which is very strange for me personally. I grew up, my parents grew up Catholic and left the church and then I got to be one-on-one with these Catholic sisters and some of these amazing women.
So one of them told a story about what I loved about the story is she tells us about the first time she witnesses. She does know she’s gonna be a Catholic sister. She’s in a very serious relationship with the boys. She’s gonna marry and she witnesses the work of what the sisters are doing. And these are particularly sisters that help people at the end of their life.
And she taught me a phrase that I’ve been obsessed with ever since. And she says, I saw, I found the pearl of great price. Like I found the thing. So there’s the stakes, and then the story is about, but she loves this man so much how is she gonna do it? And she actually, she can’t tell him. She can’t tell him.
He takes her to her fittings for her habits and sits outside. He thinks she’s volunteering and she’s being fitted for a habit, looking out the window, looking at him like heartbroken. And ultimately she has to tell him. And there’s a gorgeous scene. ’cause she chooses, she found the, the stakes are there.
She found the pearl of great price and she had to follow it, and she had to give up this other great love. So I love this because it challenge is a dominant narrative. I love it because it’s, I love, love stories and I love it because it just makes something complex that so much of us see. Simple.
And it’s a heart, it’s a beautiful, heartbreaking love story.
Bruce
Is that on the archive? It is.
Kate
It is. That’s Sister Carol and Martin. I’ll Martin Link. Yeah. Every storyteller I work with, I fall completely in love with, we were talking, I’ll give you one other example. Gosh, there’s 12 billion.
Yeah. I worked with a storyteller who was an actor in the Silence of the Lambs small part. Again I’m using this as a teachable story, but it’s not enough to just be like, guess what? I was in silence of the lamps. Who cares? You know what I mean? That’s, I look at me, I’m great. Yeah. This is a downtown theater actor, always looking for his big break, always looking for his big break.
He finally gets on the set of this movie, he gets this tiny bit part, and the major scene of the story is him effing it up. Jonathan Demi is outside. He’s acting opposite Anthony Hopkins, and he’s looking for that groove that he gets into when he does down and he knows he’s a good actor and he’s losing, he keeps messing up the language he can.
And so the stakes are all there. So it’s not, look at me, I’m this great actor. It’s what happens when this thing that you’ve been working for your entire life and that moment comes true and you. Lose it or almost lose it. Which is one of the reasons that I love that story. Is that on the archive as well?
Josh Broder told that story
Bruce
Yes. Wonderful. I’ll find both of them. Thank you so much. Listen, I I have to say that, while the book’s wonderful. The audio book is a delight because it includes clips from these, it includes the astronaut tallying the. The story and him saying that he’s just terrified that his kids are gonna remember that are gonna hear this story about how his dad effed up the Hubble telescope.
He’s he’s just wonderful to hear. So I adored this and I’m so thrilled with the generosity of yourself and of the organization into sharing these moments. Thank you so much. I’m so grateful for the chance to talk to you.
Kate
Oh, thanks so much, Bruce. Thank you for having me.
Thank you, Kate. As I mentioned both of those stories in the show notes, and look, I’m captivated by some of these things, but sometimes there’s so many stories on the moths archive that you need a degree of curation. You need someone pointing you out in the direction. Thank you. I’ve been Bruce Daisy.
If you’re interested in coming along to any of those events, obviously it’s a time thing. I’m, as I’m saying this today, there’s two weeks before the events, but obviously move soon if you wanna come along. I’ve been Bruce Daisy always welcome you getting in touch. Thank you for listening.
I’ll see you next time.
